‘The Vandal’ by Hamish Linklater, at the Flea Theater

Deirdre O’Connell and Noah Robbins in “The Vandal,” in which Mr. Robbins’s character wears down one tough woman.

Sara Krulwich / The New York Times

By CHARLES ISHERWOOD

January 31, 2013

Portraying a woman waiting for a bus in “The Vandal,” a new play by Hamish Linklater that opened on Thursday at the Flea Theater, the wonderful Deirdre O’Connell gives a brief master class in minimalist acting.

Staring glumly before her, with her arms held tightly together for maximum warmth, her nameless character utters only the chariest of responses when a teenage boy attempts to pass the time with a little friendly conversation. Barely glancing in his direction, she exudes a frosty determination to avoid any sustained engagement. Although he pretends he can’t read it, her body language couldn’t be clearer: an exhausted stillness suggests that a long, dull wait for a bus is just about all this woman expects from life, today or tomorrow or the day after. And her clipped replies to his relentless questions imply a decision to embark upon this vigil in solitude, thank you very much.

Pregnant with meaning though her stillness is, we are probably fortunate that Ms. O’Connell’s character eventually succumbs to her companion’s perky friendliness. “The Vandal,” a modest but amiable comedy-drama that is the playwriting debut of Mr. Linklater, a talented actor, depicts the gradual coming together of two lonely souls in surprising, supernatural circumstances.

Directed by Jim Simpson, “The Vandal” has been expertly cast: in addition to Ms. O’Connell, an Off Broadway mainstay who specializes in tough-hided women with generous hearts, the play stars Zach Grenier (who plays a suavely opportunistic lawyer on “The Good Wife”) as the proprietor of a liquor store near the bus stop. Noah Robbins, seen (briefly) on Broadway in Neil Simon’s “Brighton Beach Memoirs,” portrays that pesky youngster, whose desire to score some beer sets the story gently rolling.

This motormouth has been hanging around in the graveyard near the bus stop, and coaxes from the woman the information that she has just come from visiting a friend in the hospital. The existential proximity of “get well soon” and “R.I.P.” inspires a funny riff. “I guess it’s practical, it’s like economical, if things don’t go well in one place it’s a short drive to the next,” he cracks, adding that this might, on the other hand, put a damper on the moods of expectant mothers. “You’re like, ‘Yea, new life! Ooooo, right, we’re all gonna die. Shoot, almost forgot. Thanks, city planner.’ ”

The bubbly geniality of Mr. Robbins’s character eventually burrows through the woman’s tough armor, when he compares her to another free-spirited woman he knew. Both understand that, as he says, “life is short, and, like, much easier to waste than use,” and therefore “when you see a chance to buy a funny kid a beer so that your freezing wait for a bus is noisy and entertaining instead of quiet and boring, you both choose life! Life! Life! Rah, rah, rah!”

Maybe because her heart is defrosting, and maybe just so the boy will clam up, Ms. O’Connell’s character finally makes that purchase, only to be given a rough welcome by the wary, sardonic proprietor of the liquor store. He demands to see her ID, although she’s clearly on the far side of 40. He questions her credit card. Finally he advises her to buy some Cool Ranch Doritos along with the beer. When she balks, he reveals that Cool Ranch Doritos happen to be his son Robert’s favorite, and that his son makes a habit of sending in strangers to buy him beer.

Mr. Grenier, his dark baritone rumbling with mordant humor, imbues his storekeeper with a dryly cynical attitude that matches nicely with his customer’s. His testy sparring with her about her decision to purchase beer for a minor eventually wears on the poor woman’s nerves, to the point that she throws in a small bottle of whiskey for herself.

Mr. Linklater, whose stage appearances in New York include a splendid starring role in “The School for Lies” at the Classic Stage Company, writes tart, often friskily funny dialogue. All three characters in “The Vandal” are effectively drawn with sharp contours, and while the revelation on which the play turns is a slightly hoary one, it nevertheless gives the resolution a nifty little twist.

But even at about 75 minutes, the play has draggy patches and passages of overwritten dialogue. Particularly wearying is Robert’s elaborate spiel about those Cool Ranch Doritos as an extended ontological metaphor. (“What if the chip is the soul, the flavor dust is magic, the fingers what you do with your soul....”)

More appealing are the subtle ways that the loneliness — and the quiet fortitude — of the woman and the storekeeper are expressed. When they find themselves together in the cemetery, wandering among the gravestones and comparing their losses, the antagonism gives way to a growing sense of camaraderie in their mutual acceptance of life’s sadness, and the long, inescapable shadow of mortality.